Fuck that.
https://www.amazon.com/Power-Dog-Don-Winslow/dp/1400096936/ref=nodl_
There’s a good place to start. This book series will kick your teeth in. And it’s almost all completely true. I’ve listened to it three times on audible and I’m about to start it again.
The Power of the Dog is a great gang/dea story
Don Winslow has a couple novels dealing with the cartels, and the efforts to fight them. While they are fictional, they do track pretty closely with reality, and go into a lot of the politics, corruption, and economics involved. It's a lot easier to understand when you have a full picture of what exactly is involved.
They are definitely worth checking out. They are fairly graphic, but nothing that will shock someone who just looked at that album.
The two books are a series, but they don't strictly need to be read in order. I read The Cartel first, and didn't feel like I missed out on anything.
I work in the judiciary, and based on what I can tell, so many of us are broken, and we turn to so many different forms of abuse--self and otherwise--in reaction.
I'll check out that book. Thank you. 2 books which informed me tremendously about the effect of drugs on society were novels, of all things, written by a fella named Don Winslow. First was Power of the Dog, and the other was its sequel, The Cartel. If you're familiar with the movie Sicario, its tone, substance, characters could have been drawn directly from these books.
But in addition to the issues you describe, there's so much profit in drug-dealing, and so much corruption and other business opportunities arise from it, that a surprising amount of society seems to have an interest in keeping them illegal.
All of this because we're so fragile.
Think this is Leo preparing to play the role of Art Keller in the upcoming Ridley Scott film, The Cartel.
Based on the books, The Power of the Dog and The Cartel, released recently. I've just been lucky enough to read the latter, absolutely briliant. Would seriously recommend it to anyone!
This is the one he'll win an Oscar for
Book 2
http://www.amazon.com/The-Cartel-novel-Don-Winslow/dp/1101874996